Little birds and little bunnies

Kip, a very tiny Eastern Cottontail

I've had an adorable little visitor in our garden lately.  Many gardeners don't appreciate his kind and I know how they feel because I feel the same way about deer.  But bunnies don't bother my garden too much.  The few vegetables I grow are protected in pots on the deck and the rabbits seem to mainly enjoy eating clover in the lawn.  We usually have a few rabbits in our yard but don't always see the very young ones.  This little guy is only about the size of a softball.  By tradition, his name is Kip.  (In fact, whenever we see a little one like this, its name is Kip.  The original Kip is probably a fat old bunny by now.  He probably goes by a more grown-up nickname among his rabbit friends nowadays.)  The name comes, indirectly, from Winnie-the-Pooh.  Christopher Robin Milne, son of A.A. Milne, was called Kip by his family in real life.

Carolina Chickadee

There's also a lot of bird activity in our yard, year round.  While I was trying to stay inconspicuous behind shrubs to get close enough to photograph the baby bunny, this Carolina Chickadee allowed me to get a portrait as well.  I don't feel I have a lot of skill at wildlife photography (except maybe bugs) and to really make the most out of wildlife photography you need to have a much longer telephoto lens to allow you to get close-up photos of creatures without getting into their space.  However, the chickadees and sparrows that come to the feeders are more comfortable with people (or at least with my husband and me) and occasionally let me get a decent photo with a moderate telephoto lens.  Here are a few more shots taken in winter of some of our winter residents hanging around near the feeders.

White-throated sparrow (photo taken in December)

Yellow-rumped warbler (photo taken in December)

Every once in a while, I experience a magical moment where a wild bird -- a Ruby-crowned kinglet or a Ruby-throated hummingbird -- will take the initiative and approach very closely for a moment to take a look at me, close enough for me to get a good look without binoculars and really appreciate how tiny and perfect these little creatures are.  Of course, I have never had a camera in hand at one of those moments! This is one of my greatest pleasures in gardening, and the prime reason I garden in the rather lax, wildlife-friendly style that I do.  

Recently I turned up a pair of lists of "garden pleasures" in my gardening notebook.  This was an exercise in one of my favorite gardening books, Pleasures of the Cottage Garden by Rand Lee.  It's called the Ruling Passions Exercise and is meant to help you plan out a new garden.  I have also used it to help me focus when it seems there are just too many things I need to improve.  There are multiple lists in this exercise, but I have my "answers" from only two of them -- I think I had too much fun with these two to ever move onto lists #3 and #4.  The first list is potential uses of your garden and the second is Sensory Pleasures. The idea is to brainstorm a list of all that you want from a garden in these categories.  The book goes on to describe how to work through your list to decide which is most important to you, to focus your gardening efforts on what will give you the most pleasure early on from your new garden.  The garden "use" that means the most to me is attracting wildlife, and one of the sensory pleasures that ranked high on my list is "little birds approaching closely."  I realized looking through this list that I have achieved a lot of what I hoped for in my garden.  This is a really comforting and cheerful thing to think about when it's 104 degrees outside and everything looks a bit wilted and there are weeds I don't have the fortitude to go out and pull.  Little birds aren't the only pleasure my garden has to offer me, either, even now when it is not at it's prime, visually.  Visual beauty of course appears multiple times in multiple ways on my list -- and my garden has some of that too -- but this is not its most shining moment in that department.  In the near future, I hope to post about a few more of my ruling passions and explore what my garden has to offer. 

First view of July

It's the start of July and, boy is it hot!  This seemed to happen rather suddenly (although I was in cool Paris last weekend so my perceptions might be warped).  I feel like there is still a lot of gardening to do -- and not just weeding -- so I hope there are some more moderate days now and again before autumn.  But meanwhile, this weekend, it's too hot to go outside for more than 15 minutes at a time.  So, my first views are views from the windows! Visit Town Mouse and Country Mouse for some other garden "first views".

This is the backyard, what I call the butterfly garden.  I said last month that it was just about to explode in Black Eyed Susans and so it has. 

We moved the bench outside the bed just this year.  I originally designed the garden with the bench and a path inside it, but once the plants grew I realized the garden wasn't as big as I thought it was!  Since we moved the bench, we've gotten a lot more enjoyment sitting on it, watching the garden and the butterflies or just reading in the evening after work.  I also spend a ridiculous amount of time staring out the bathroom window at the garden in the morning before I've fully woken up.  The garden is north of the house, so all the flowers obligingly face the house.  

And here is the front garden.  This view is from our guest room.  I actually had this in mind while I designed this garden (although the guest room view was only one of many priorities) but ironically our house guests usually come in the wintertime when there is much less to see.  This view gives an unusual but more complete view of our little patio garden, which was conceived and built over the last few years (with the patio itself being the latest step and just finished last summer).  The fence gives us just enough of a feeling of privacy for me to feel comfortable hanging around out front.  This is the sunniest part of the yard so I really appreciate this garden a lot.

Macro Monday: Designer Bugs

I went on a bug safari.  I didn't have to go far, just to my back garden where the annual black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia fulgida) and Shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum) are in full bloom.  Many of the black-eyed Susans have inchworms camped out on them chewing away at the centers of the blooms (hmm, maybe that's why the goldfinches are so interested in them already, too!)  So I searched around and found one of my favorites.  This Synchlora species (I think) caterpillar glues bits of flowers onto its back for camouflage.   The common name is Decorator Geometer.  What a cool name for a cool insect.

Inspired by the decorator, I went looking for some "color echo".  This is a concept I hear about all the time in the context of garden design, where you group plants together so that colors on the two plants echo each other.  I especially like it when the dominant color of one bloom is echoed in the color of a detail on the other, like the anthers or a colored edge to the petals.  I decided to try to get a few shots of color echo between bugs and blooms.  This hover fly (Eristalis sp., I think) was a great color echo, but not a great photograph since I didn't get much of the head and the wings are not distinct.  Unfortunately, it zipped off after the first shot and I couldn't find it again.

The spotted cucumber beetle, Diabrotica undecimpunctata, was more cooperative as it was munching on daisy pollen.  It would sometimes run off to hide under the white ray flowers (i.e. the "petals"), taking along a snack, as you can see, but it kept coming back to the disk flowers for more.

For more Macro Monday offerings, including more bugs, please visit Lisa's Chaos.

Bloom Day, Pt 3, preview of things to come

I've split up my Garden Blogger's Bloom Day post for June because there was just so much in bloom it was too many photos for one post (that and I'm actually not here -- these posts are going off on a schedule, hopefully!)

To finish up, here are a couple blooms I really did not expect to see in June.  Asters?!?!?  Only a few blooms, but I have never seen asters in June before.

And these mistflowers, Eupatorium coelestinum: I've had these for several years and they always bloom in August for me.  I know this has been an unusually warm wet year, but has anyone else had blooms in June from normally very late blooming plants like this?

Bloom Day, Pt 2, a Gloriosa June

There was so much in bloom for June Bloom Day that I left a few of photos off the main post.  In fact, what I left out was the one flower that is blooming just about everywhere in my garden, the annual Black Eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta.  

Here it is with Gladiolas and the last of the larkspurs.  Suddenly there are glads all over town.  These ones were "liberated" from the garden at a rental house my friend was moving away from.  We thought it would be nice if she could take some flowers with her to be sure to have some at her new house.  The rental never missed them, I'm sure (we only took a little bit).  Since I'd never had glads, I accepted some liberated gladiolas for my own garden.  I think they look pretty nice with the black-eyed susans, although it was not a combination I planned.  

Combining with the purple coneflower and the dark-leaved canna, as above, is more what I had in mind.  The white flower in the background is some kind of Erigeron (fleabane) that came up on its own.  I'll probably regret letting it stay, next year, when I'm weeding out dozens of its progeny, but I just adore little white daisies combining with everything.  Some of my favorites are chamomile in the spring and a special native aster I'm sure I'll write about in the fall.  Until this year, I didn't even know I could have tiny white daisies like this in June.

Above are the black-eyed susans with Pycnanthemum, mountain mint.  Up close, the mountain mint blooms are nothing special except to the gazillion pollinators they attract, but I really like the silvery color en masse.  This mint is very pungent, a little too strong to eat but very nice dried for tea, along with a little lemon verbena.    

One more combination.  I let the black-eyed susans come up pretty much wherever they want, as you can see.  One plant came up right in the middle of my glossy abelia.  I might have pulled this one, except I think it looks awesome with this Gloriosa lily that just started blooming in my garden.  I blogged about the Gloriosa lily last week.  In fact, this is almost the same picture that I posted before, but now a second bloom has opened and the first one is aging.  Look at that!  The aging bloom turns more red!  This is one crazy amazing flower.

Gloriosa lily, Gloriosa daisy.  Is it the combination of red and yellow that caused these to be considered glorious?  The black-eyed susan is very variable, and I frequently get versions of this pattern with the dark marroon red in the center.  These ones are called Gloriosa daisies, but it's the same species.

June Bloom Day

Doctor, Doctor, Coreopsis has set in!  When I was 7 or 8 my brother played the title character in a high school production of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."   I thought that was a great joke... once it was explained to me.  Even after learning that coreopsis is a flower, I thought it was something quite exotic and never saw one (or expected to) for years.  But that's only because I was raised in the city.  Coreopsis is actually a genus of native U.S. flowers and not particularly uncommon.  Along with this, which I believe is Coreopsis triloba, I also have "Zagreb" blooming, the popular named selection of threadleaf coreopsis, Coreopsis verticillata. 

More than Coreopsis, quite a lot of other blooms have set it for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day this June.  Perhaps the most prominent blooms around here, detectable from a distance if conditions are just right, are the gardenias.  My mature shrub, planted by previous owners, is apparently not in a good spot and suffers constant yellowing of the leaves despite my attempts to please it with chelated iron.  But I love the blooms, especially their fragrance.  I have put another Gardenia in another spot hoping it will be happier in the long term.  I was pleased to see blooms on it this year, but it is too young and small to make much of an impact yet.  In the photo with the gardenia are also the blooms of the herb Marjoram.  Other herbs in bloom this June Bloom Day include oregano, just starting, and dill and chives, winding down.

Along with Gardenias are the Hydrangeas.  I have a pink mophead that I showed in May and various U.S. native hydrangeas.  My oakleaf hydrangea started blooming just after May Bloom Day but is very young and had just one bloom.  Likewise, my pink Hydrangea arborescens is also too new to have more than a single bloom.  But my Hydrangea arborescens "Annabelle" is several years old and has enormous blooms on it, like the one shown below.  Unfortunately, the bloom clusters are so large and heavy that a formidable windstorm a few weeks ago caused the shrub to more-or-less collapse.  Since that was the storm which dropped a small tornado on a different part of town, I am not complaining.  I'm sure Annabelle will be just fine.

A first for me this year is Sweet Alyssum.... please don't laugh.  I know this plant is common as dirt for some people, but I have tried sowing seeds many times without success.  This year I discovered that the best time to sow them is in fall, in my area.  Of course it was already winter by the time I found out, but it was such a mild winter I gave it a try.  I probably shouldn't even show this photo, which isn't much, except that I'm happy to have finally had a small success with it.  I'm hoping that now that there are a few plants, it will self sow.  If it does, then I don't have to figure out the best time to do it!

Another first for me this year is this St. John's Wort, 'Brigadoon'.  I've had this for a few years but this is the first time it has bloomed.  I've moved it a few times but it seems happy enough in this new spot.  I like the spot too because it's not going to clobber anything delicate nearby!

Here's another plant I had to move because it was a little too spready.  I really like the color of this yarrow "Cerise Queen" and would love to have it combining with other plants in my pseudo-cottage garden, but when I tried that, it spread maddeningly even the first year.  So now I'm trying to use its spreading tendency to my advantage in a spot around the trunk of a young tree, to make a buffer between the tree and the lawn.  I don't want grass right up to the trunk, which would risk damage to the tree from a string trimmer, but the tree is still too small to shade out the annoying bermuda grass.  But yarrow seems to be a good buffer.  It doesn't suffer much from competing with either the tree or the grass, does a reasonably good job masking the fact that I don't weed the grass out as often as I should, and can be mowed on the edges with impunity.

Another spreader that I have not kicked out of the garden yet is bee balm.  This will bulk out considerably if I let it, but doesn't have the same annoying habit of popping up at a distance from the mother plant.  This is the first bee balm bloom this year.  I think there will be a lot more soon.

Similarly, this is the first of hopefully many four o'clocks, Mirablis jalapa.  I like this multicolored variety, which has blooms of multiple solid colors as well as striped and speckled ones, all on the same plant.  I suspect I will have a lot more four o'clocks to show on July's Bloom Day.

One of my favorite plants is this Veronica or speedwell.  I don't know the cultivar.  I think it was just labeled "blue".  It combines very nicely with black-eyed susans and purple coneflowers, and seems to have a very long bloom period.  It began blooming just in time for the previous Bloom Day and I think it may continue to the next one.

Uh oh, I'm running out of time....  I mostly take my Bloom Day photos in the evening after work.  It seems like every time I get the chance to get out and take some photos it gets overcast and windy.  Overcast is pretty good for photos, but that means I need a longer time exposure and the breeze is not helping.  Oh, well, I'll just go with it.  This is a butterfly bush, showing off the silvery undersides of the leaves as the breeze starts to turn into a gust...  now I have to run!

Check out May Dreams Gardens to see what's blooming for other gardeners on this Bloom Day

Gloriosa superba

Here's something new under the sun.  Well, not really, but definitely new for the Sprouts and Wildlings garden!  I planted this curiosity two autumns ago, but last summer it got only one bud that was quickly chewed by some kind of insect and so I didn't get to enjoy the bloom.  But my patience has been rewarded.  I'm excited by this bright, colorful, bizarre flower and its eccentric habits.  

Gloriosa superba "Rothschildiana" seems fantastic to me in every way.  These rippled red and yellow flared petals are outlandish.  It's a lily, but before now I have never seen a climbing lily (excluding in the book that tempted me to buy it, Garden Bulbs for the South by Scott Ogden).  Not only that, how it climbs seems singularly odd to me.  I know that some climbers climb by suckers or root hairs and others twist their stems around the supports.  I know that some climbers have tendrils and others just hang on by thorns (like roses).  Up to now, I thought that clematis was a little strange, the way its leaf petioles are used as tendrils.  Gloriosa lily is just a bit stranger, in my opinion.  The climbing tendrils are elongated leaf tips.  You can see it in the bottom of this photo, where the large light green lily leaf (typically shaped for a lily except for that crazy tip) has wrapped around the stem of the Abelia it's climbing through.

The Gloriosa lily may not be hardy in my garden, although it's in the warmest microclimate I have -- this past winter was probably not a real test.  I hope it lasts for years, but it may turn out to be a one-time pleasure.  Even if that's the case, I'm glad I gave it a try and got to learn about and enjoy this strange and wonderful beast in my own garden.

For other strange and wonderful beasts, check out Macro Monday on Lisa's Chaos.